Multihop network is an approach utilizing distributed wireless stations for relaying. In this system, area size, coverage and total transmit power efficiency can be improved. It is shown by computer simulations that the cooperative relaying scheme provides transmit diversity effect, and can offer much better performance compared with that of non-cooperation case. To confirm this superior performance in actual environments, field trials using real time communication equipments are now being planned. This paper reports the design and the performance of wireless equipments for field trials.

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This paper proposes a new multi-band received signal strength (MRSS) fingerprinting based indoor location system, which employs the frequency diversity on the conventional single-band received signal strength (RSS) fingerprinting based indoor location system. In the proposed system, the impacts of frequency diversity on the enhancements of positioning accuracy are analyzed. Effectiveness of the proposed system is proved by experimental approach, which was conducted in non line-of-sight (NLOS) environment under the area of 103m² at Yagami Campus, Keio University. WLAN access points, which simultaneously transmit dual-band signal of 2.4 and 5.2GHz, are utilized as transmitters. Likewise, a dual-band WLAN receiver is utilized as a receiver. Signal distances calculated by both Manhattan and Euclidean were classified by K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifier to illustrate the performance of the proposed system. The results confirmed that Frequency diversity attributions of multi-band signal provide accuracy improvement over 50% of the conventional single-band.

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Motivated by the deployment of post-disaster MANEMO (MANET for NEMO) composed of mobile routers and stations, we evaluate two candidate routing protocols through network simulation, theoretical performance analysis, and field experiments. The first protocol is the widely adopted Optimized Link State Routing protocol (OLSR) and the second is the combination of the Tree Discovery Protocol (TDP) with Network In Node Advertisement (NINA). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that these two protocols are compared in both theoretical and practical terms. We focus on the control overhead generated when mobile routers perform a handover. Our results confirm the correctness and operational robustness of both protocols. More interestingly, although in the general case OLSR leads to better results, TDP/NINA outperforms OLSR both in the case of sparse networks and in highly mobile networks, which correspond to the operation point of a large set of post-disaster scenarios.

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Recently, the importance of data sharing structures in autonomous distributed networks has been increasing. A wireless sensor network is used for managing distributed data. This type of distributed network requires effective information exchanging methods for data sharing. To reduce the traffic of broadcasted messages, reduction of the amount of redundant information is indispensable. In order to reduce packet loss in mobile ad-hoc networks, QoS-sensitive routing algorithm have been frequently discussed. The topology of a wireless network is likely to change frequently according to the movement of mobile nodes, radio disturbance, or fading due to the continuous changes in the environment. Therefore, a packet routing algorithm should guarantee QoS by using some quality indicators of the wireless network. In this paper, a novel information exchanging algorithm developed using a hash function and a Boolean operation is proposed. This algorithm achieves efficient information exchanges by reducing the overhead of broadcasting messages, and it can guarantee QoS in a wireless network environment. It can be applied to a routing algorithm in a mobile ad-hoc network. In the proposed routing algorithm, a routing table is constructed by using the received signal strength indicator (RSSI), and the neighborhood information is periodically broadcasted depending on this table. The proposed hash-based routing entry management by using an extended MAC address can eliminate the overhead of message flooding. An analysis of the collision of hash values contributes to the determination of the length of the hash values, which is minimally required. Based on the verification of a mathematical theory, an optimum hash function for determining the length of hash values can be given. Simulations are carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and to validate the theory in a general wireless network routing algorithm.

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Next generation network characteristics increase the complexity in the design and provision of advanced services, making inappropriate the selection of traditional approaches. Future networks are becoming larger in scale, more dynamic and more heterogeneous. In order to cope with these requirements, services are expected to adapt to environmental conditions and require minimum human intervention. In this paper a new model for providing autonomous and decentralized services is proposed, especially focusing on mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Using a newly proposed four-layered approach, service development may be realized independently from the underlying physical network. In a reference implementation, it is demonstrated that it is possible to set up an overlay network that hides any network changes from the service layer. Multiple mechanisms have been adapted in order to efficiently — in terms of message exchanges and convergence time — operate over an ad hoc environment. Finally, it is demonstrated that a specific service could operate over a dynamic network with multiple failures.

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This paper proposes two novel frame resource allocation schemes: Mixed bidirectional allocation scheme and Offset allocation scheme. They improve system capacity and latency performance unlike the conventional time-division duplex relay scheme which divides the frame structure into time segments for the access zone and time segment for the relay zones as in IEEE802.16j (WiMAX) systems. Computer simulations confirm that the two proposed schemes outperform the conventional schemes in terms of throughput and latency. An evaluation of the offset allocation scheme confirms that it improves the total throughput by about 85%, and reduces latency by about 72%, compared to the conventional schemes.

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Energy efficiency is one of the most important attributes in sensor network protocols. In sensor nodes, communication related activities consume the major share of battery energy. Therefore, judicious choice of transmit power and frame size are very important to maximize the energy efficiency and hence the lifetime of nodes. While there have been a few recent studies on transmit power control implementation in sensor nodes, no report has thoroughly investigated transmit power control and the effect of its interplay with frame size on nodal energy saving. In this paper, we report our implementation of automatic transmit power control in wireless sensor nodes based on open loop parameters — namely, link layer frame size, and close loop parameters — namely, number of consecutive positive acknowledgments and receive signal strength. Our extensive indoor and outdoor experimental results show that, for low to moderate transmission distances, transmit power control has the energy saving benefit, and the larger the frame size the more the energy saving. At a higher transmission distance or at a more error-prone communication scenario, transmit power control as well as a large frame size are detrimental to energy saving performance. The results from this study could be useful in deciding power control strategies and optimum frame length.

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This paper proposes an interference avoidance technique that allows wireless device with similar frequency bands to be operated adjacent to each other for compact mobile wireless routers (MWRs). This MWR implements two devices of Wireless LAN (WLAN) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX). The MWR connects WLAN terminals to the backbone network by using WiMAX-WLAN relay. Generally, different frequency channels are assigned for the wireless systems assign in order not to interfere among multiple systems. However, mutual system interference is generated if the space between each device is very close and if the frequency using each system is adjacent. To suppress this interference, this paper proposes a novel interference avoidance technique that leverages IEEE802.11n Power Save Multi-Poll (PSMP). First, we clarify the conditions that raise the issues of mutual interference by experiment. Simulations are conducted to show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional schemes. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is shown by the computer simulation.

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This paper proposes and investigates a distributed adaptive contention window adjustment algorithm based on the transmission history for wireless LANs called the transmission-history-based distributed adaptive contention window adjustment (THAW) algorithm. The objective of this paper is to reduce the transmission delay and improve the channel throughput compared to conventional algorithms. The feature of THAW is that it adaptively adjusts the initial contention window (CW_init) size in the binary exponential backoff (BEB) algorithm used in the IEEE 802.11 standard according to the transmission history and the automatic rate fallback (ARF) algorithm, which is the most basic algorithm in automatic rate controls. This effect is to keep CW_init at a high value in a congested state. Simulation results show that the THAW algorithm outperforms the conventional algorithms in terms of the channel throughput and delay, even if the timer in the ARF is changed.

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Motivated by the needs of modern agriculture, in this paper we present CropNET, a wireless multimedia sensor network system for agriculture monitoring. Both hardware and software designs of CropNET are tailored for sensing in wide farmland without human supervision. We have carried out multiple rounds of deployments. The evaluation results show that CropNET performs well and facilitates modern agriculture.

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IEEE 802.15.4a standard enables location-aided routing or topology control in ZigBee networks, since it uses time-of-arrival (TOA)-based ranging technique. However, TOA based techniques may yield location error due to the non-line-of-sight (NLOS) effects, and hence degrade the network performance. In this letter, we demonstrate the impact of NLOS on the localization performance and propose a location error detection and compensation algorithm for IEEE 802.15.4a networks. The proposed algorithm detects NLOS by using the min-max algorithm and compensates the location error by using the Kalman filter. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the localization errors in indoor environments.

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In this paper, a coexistence mechanism between IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11b, Active Channel Reservation for cOexiStence (ACROS), is proposed. The key idea underlining ACROS is to reserve the channel for IEEE 802.15.4 transmission, where IEEE 802.11 transmissions are forbidden. The request-to-send (RTS)/clear-to send (CTS) mechanism within IEEE 802.11 is used to reserve a channel. The proposed ACROS mechanism is implemented into a PC based prototype. The embedded version of ACROS is also developed to mitigate the timing drift problem in the PC-based ACROS. The efficiency of ACROS is shown using the throughput and packet error rate achieved in actual experiments.

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Ad hoc networking uses wireless technologies to construct networks with no physical infrastructure and so are expected to provide instant networking in areas such as disaster recovery sites and inter-vehicle communication. Unlike conventional wired networks services, services in ad hoc networks are easily disrupted by the frequent changes in traffic and topology. Therefore, solutions to assure the Quality of Services (QoS) in ad hoc networks are different from the conventional ones used in wired networks. In this paper, we propose a new queue management scheme, Interference Drop Scheme (IDS) for ad hoc networks. In the conventional queue management approaches such as FIFO (First-in First-out) and RED (Random Early Detection), a queue is usually managed by a queue length limit. FIFO discards packets according to the queue limit, and RED discards packets in an early and random fashion. IDS, on the other hand, manages the queue according to wireless interference time, which increases as the number of contentions in the MAC layer increases. When there are many MAC contentions, IDS discards TCP data packets. By observing the interference time and discarding TCP data packets, our simulation results show that IDS improves TCP performance and reduces QoS violations in UDP in ad hoc networks with chain, grid, and random topologies. Our simulation results also demonstrate that wireless interference time is a better metric than queue length limit for queue management in multi-hop ad hoc networks.

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In this paper, we study an opportunistic scheduling scheme for the TDMA wireless network with relay stations. We model the time-varying channel condition of a wireless link as a stochastic process. Based on this model, we formulate an optimization problem for the opportunistic scheduling scheme that maximizes the expected system throughput while satisfying the QoS constraint of each user. In the opportunistic scheduling scheme for the system without relay stations, each user has only one communication path between the base station and itself, and thus only user selection is considered. However, in our opportunistic scheduling scheme for the system with relay stations, since there may exist multiple paths between the base station and a user, not only user selection but also path selection for the scheduled user is considered. In addition, we also propose an opportunistic time-sharing method for time-slot sharing between base station and relay stations. With the opportunistic time-sharing method, our opportunistic scheduling provides opportunistic resource sharing in three places in the system: user selection in a time-slot, path selection for the selected user, and time-slot sharing between base station and relay stations. Simulation results show that as the number of places that opportunistic resource sharing is applied to increases, the performance improvement also increases.

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One-tap frequency-domain equalization (FDE) based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion can significantly improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of single-carrier (SC) transmission in a frequency-selective fading channel. However, a big performance gap from the theoretical lower bound still exists due to the presence of residual inter-symbol interference (ISI) after MMSE-FDE. In this paper, we point out that the frequency-domain received SC signal can be expressed using the matrix representation similar to the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiplexing and therefore, signal detection schemes developed for MIMO multiplexing, other than simple one-tap MMSE-FDE, can be applied to SC transmission. Then, for the reception of SC signals, we propose a new signal detection scheme, which combines FDE with MIMO signal detection, such as MMSE detection and Vertical-Bell Laboratories layered space-time architecture (V-BLAST) detection (we call this frequency-domain block signal detection). The achievable average BER performance using the proposed frequency-domain block signal detection is evaluated by computer simulation.

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Dynamic spectrum access has become a focal issue recently, in which identifying the available spectrum plays a rather important role. Lots of work has been done concerning secondary user (SU) synchronously accessing primary user's (PU's) network. However, on one hand, SU may have no idea about PU's communication protocols; on the other, it is possible that communications among PU are not based on synchronous scheme at all. In order to address such problems, this paper advances a strategy for SU to search available spectrums with asynchronous MAC-layer sensing. With this method, SUs need not know the communication mechanisms in PU's network when dynamically accessing. We will focus on four aspects: 1) strategy for searching available channels; 2) vacating strategy when PUs come back; 3) estimation of channel parameters; 4) impact of SUs' interference on PU's data rate. The simulations show that our search strategy not only can achieve nearly 50% less interference probability than equal allocation of total search time, but also well adapts to time-varying channels. Moreover, access by our strategies can attain 150% more access time than random access. The moment matching estimator shows good performance in estimating and tracing time-varying channels.

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Cooperative relaying (CR) is a promising technique to provide spatial diversity by combining multiple signals from source and relay stations. In the present paper, the impact and use of the asymmetric property in bi-directional CR under asymmetric traffic conditions are discussed assuming that CR involves one communication pair and one relay station in a time division duplex (TDD) system. The asymmetric property means that the average communication quality differs for each transmission direction because of the difference in signal power between the combined signals for each direction. First, numerical results show the asymmetric property of bi-directional CR. Next, in order to evaluate the impact of the asymmetric property, the optimal relay position and resource allocation are compared to those in simple multi-hop relaying, which does not have the asymmetric property. Numerical results show that, in order to maximize the overall quality of bi-directional communication, the optimal relay position in CR depends on the offered traffic ratio, which is defined as the traffic ratio of each transmission direction, while the offered traffic ratio does not affect the optimal relay position in multi-hop relaying. Finally, the asymmetric property is used to enhance the overall quality. Specifically, a high overall quality can be achieved by, for example, opportunistically switching to the transmission direction with higher quality. Under asymmetric traffic conditions, weighted proportionally fair scheduling (WPFS), which is proposed in the context of downlink scheduling in a cellular network, is applied to transmission direction switching. Numerical results reveal that WPFS provides a high overall quality and that the quality ratio is similar to the offered traffic ratio.

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This paper proposes a printed tag antenna for the universal ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) band (860-960MHz) using the R2R process. To widen impedance bandwidth, a π-shaped matching network is suggested. The overall dimension of the proposed tag antenna is 83.4mm × 30.2mm and it has a gain of over 1dBi for the entire UHF RFID band. The performances of the proposed tag antenna, printed with conductivity silver ink using an R2R process, are compared with those of a copper antenna.

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This paper presents the new switching converter model used for analyzing the generation mechanism of ringing ground leakage (GL) current, generated during the transient, at switch on/off of any switching converter. By applying the Norton model, the proposed new model of switching converter can be formulated. The ringing GL current is evaluated at the switching on/off of the unbalanced (half-bridge converter) and the balanced converter (full-bridge converter) for bidirectional D.C. motor drive used as an example. It is concluded that the measured and simulated results of the generated GL current agree well with the numerical analysis results, analyzed by the proposed new model of switching converter, in terms of the minimum or maximum peak currents and the ringing frequency.

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The use of the in-phase synthetic method is proposed for antenna calibration using the three-antenna method (TAM) in order to make the TAM applicable even in a semi-anechoic chamber (SAC) or on an open-area test site. Suitable antenna arrangements are theoretically investigated for this improved calibration method. Experimental analyses demonstrate that the in-phase synthetic method can remarkably reduce unwanted effects of the ground-reflected wave. Therefore, even on a metal ground plane, the proposed TAM with the in-phase synthetic method can yield an accurate actual gain of a double ridged guide antenna at frequencies from 4GHz to 14GHz with differences of +0.16/−0.37dB from the results of the conventional TAM performed in an fully anechoic room (FAR).

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Method for eliminating magnetic saturation in low-voltage and high-current DC-DC converter with fast dynamic response is described. The magnetic saturation is observed in onboard isolated bridge-type DC-DC converter due to inherently asymmetrical PWM signal during transient condition. The saturation is not eliminated by using ac-coupling capacitor for transformer. Mechanism of the saturation is analyzed and confirmed by experiments. Based on the analysis a solution for the magnetic saturation is proposed. The effectiveness of proposed method is also confirmed by experiments.

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Although the probabilistic model checking tool called PRISM has been applied in many communication systems, such as wireless local area network, Bluetooth, and ZigBee, the technique is not used in a controller area network (CAN). In this paper, we use PRISM to model the mechanism of priority messages for CAN because the mechanism has allowed CAN to become the leader in serial communication for automobile and industry control. Through modeling CAN, it is easy to analyze the characteristic of CAN for further improving the security and efficiency of automobiles. The Markov chain model helps us to model the behaviour of priority messages.

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This letter presents a theoretical analysis of the Parallel Iterative Matching (PIM)'s dynamics with multiple iterations used in an input-buffered packet switch. In our approach, by carefully categorizing all unmatched patterns into several representative patterns after each iteration, probabilities of accumulated matched pairs in a recursive manner are successfully obtained. Numerical evaluations of the analytical formulas are performed.

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In this paper, we propose a novel filtering method for processing continuous skyline queries in wireless sensor network environments. The existing filtering methods on such environments use filters that are based on router paths. However, these methods do not have a major effect on reducing data for sensor nodes to transmit to the base station, because the filters are applied to not the whole area but a partial area. Therefore, we propose a novel and efficient method to dramatically reduce the data transmissions of sensors through applying an effective filter with low costs to all sensor nodes. The proposed effective filter is generated by using characteristics such as the data locality and the clustering of sensors. An extensive performance study verifies the merits of our new method.

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In this letter, we propose three algorithms to reduce congestion for greedy forwarding, which is one of common principles in geographic routing. The new algorithms take geographic position information and network congestion metrics to balance traffic. When these algorithms are combined with well-known GPSR protocol [1], packet delivery ratio is enhanced by reducing number of lost packets in a buffer. In addition, end-to-end delay is reduced by bypassing congested nodes. These features are evaluated and analyzed through several simulation results.

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In this letter, we develop a behavioral metric with which spamming botnets can be quickly identified with respect to their residing IP blocks. Our method aims at line-speed operation without deep inspection, so only TCP/IP header fields of the passing packets are examined. However, the proposed metric yields a high-quality receiver operating characteristics (ROC), with high detection rates and low false positive rates.

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Cooperation is an attractive approach to improving the spectrum sensing performance of cognitive systems experiencing deep shadowing and fading. In this letter, an efficient weight-based cooperative spectrum sensing scheme is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has better accuracy than “AND,” “OR,” and “half-voting” combination schemes and has similar spectrum sensing accuracy but with lower computational and communication complexity in comparison to the “optimal data fusion” rule.

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In this letter, two receive diversity combining techniques are proposed for cooperative relay systems based on single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) when relay station (RS) transmits the received signals from multiple mobile stations (MSs) together using one large size discrete Fourier transform (DFT). A simplified-MRC (S-MRC) technique performs diversity combining in the time-domain by using the estimated channel weights and initial estimates obtained by the SC-FDMA signal detector. An interference rejection-MRC (IR-MRC) technique performs diversity combining in the frequency-domain by adjusting the DFT spreading size at the receiver. It is shown by computer simulation that the proposed receive combining techniques achieve a significant diversity gain over the conventional techniques.

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Conventional RFID interrogators use symbol-by-symbol-based detectors such as the matched filter and the edge detector for signal detection which do not sufficiently exploit the structure of the data-encoded waveforms. In this paper we propose a Viterbi-based algorithm to detect the data sequence of the RFID systems using the EPC-Global Generation-2 standard. By decomposing the associated data-encoded waveform on a half-cycle basis, the proposed approach first transfer the representation of the data-encoding scheme to a trellis diagram and thus leads to the application of the Viterbi algorithm for data sequence estimation. Also, different from the traditional Viterbi algorithm using correlation coefficient as the branch metrics, the proposed algorithm uses the absolute correlation coefficient as our branch metric which can exactly save the computational complexity of the Viterbi algorithm up to 50 percent. As compared to conventional approaches, the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the system performance due to its full exploitation of the baseband signal structure.

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This letter presents a novel pre-transformed interleaved frequency division multiple access (IFDMA) transmission structure that improves system performance without the desire of channel information at the transmitter. Simulation results show that the proposed structure can provide improved system performance while only moderately increasing the complexity, and keeping the advantage of a low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal for SISO and MISO channels.

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In this letter, we propose an interference-aware resource allocation algorithm for the uplink of OFDMA systems. It comprises a macrocell overlaid with short range femtocells. We define the interferences that occur between a macrocell and femtocells and present the resource assignment algorithm to resolve and mitigate the cross-tier interference effect based on the defined interference factors. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs well in a macrocell and femtocells.

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In this letter, we propose a low-complexity sparse channel estimation method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The proposed method uses a discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-based technique for channel estimation and a novel sorted noise space discrimination technique to estimate the channel length and tap positions. Simulation results demonstrate that the reduction in signal space improves the channel estimation performance.

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Continuous processing and servicing of a new incoming session in LTE systems demands optimal tracking of the mobile user. In this letter, an optimal, information-theoretic framework is developed for tracking area update for next-generation LTE cellular systems. Shannon's entropy is used to characterize the location uncertainty of mobile user. The framework captures users' mobility patterns online and performs profile-based paging for optimizing the tracking area update cost. Simulation results demonstrate reductions in both update and paging costs in comparison to existing LTE systems.

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A new design and experimental results of a microstrip-fed ultra-wideband Fermi antenna at millimeter-wave frequencies are presented. By utilizing a new microstrip-to-CPS balun (or transition), which provides wider bandwidth than conventional planar balun, the design of microstrip-fed Fermi antenna is greatly simplified. The proposed Fermi antenna demonstrates ultra-wideband performance for the frequency range of 23 to over 58GHz with the antenna gain of 12 to 14dBi and low sidelobe levels. This design yields highly effective solutions to various millimeter-wave phased-arrays and imaging systems.

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This letter deals with mobile location estimation based on a minimax mean-squared error (MSE) algorithm using time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements for mitigating the nonline-of-sight (NLOS) effects in cellular systems. Simulation results are provided for illustrating the minimax MSE estimator yields good performance than the other least squares and weighted least squares estimators under relatively low signal-to-noise ratio and moderately NLOS conditions.

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Maido-1 satellite was launched on 23 January 2009. The satellite carries the radio-frequency payload, Broadband Measurement of Waveform for VHF Lightning Impulses (VHF sensor), for research on lightning discharges. The final goal of our research is to locate sources of impulsive VHF radiation from lightning discharges and constantly monitor lightning activity from space. Maido-1 satellite has the aim of proving the functions of the sensor in space and to study the radio propagation characteristics of the ionosphere. Through the operation/observation for 5 months, more than 10, 000 VHF signals have been recorded. The locations where VHF signals are detected and the examples of the received waveforms are presented in this paper. We discuss the regional dependency of the received signals.

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